


String Theory

by Doyle



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-01
Updated: 2005-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:03:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Doyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It's bigger on the inside. It's alien. Are you alien?</i> Dalek post-ep. Adam-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	String Theory

**Author's Note:**

> (Written after _Dalek_ but before The Long Game.)

He’s thinking about sixteen-dimension string theory as he follows them through the doors, because Adam doesn’t know how to not think about a million things at the one time, even when they’re about to be sealed into the museum and the Doctor and Rose are arsing about with a blue box; he’s thinking about the exhibits as well, and working out how much concrete it’s going to take to fill in fifty-one levels, and wondering if his talking-to-girls problem’s gone away since the last time he saw one and whether he should ask Rose out.

When he finally cottons on to what’s in front of his eyes — when the door slams behind him and the… the _spaceship_ starts to shake and Rose is looking over at him, laughing and pulling levers on some sort of control panel in the middle of the room as the Doctor shouts instructions — he doesn’t know what to think any more.

* * *

It’s bigger on the inside. Which is good, seeing as there’s three of them and they’d never fit inside if it was a real phone box or whatever it’s meant to be, but he’s finding it just a bit tricky to get his head round all this.

He doesn’t believe in starting at the beginning — linear’s never really worked for him — so he goes for the big one first. It’s a spaceship. A proper, real, genuine spaceship.

“It’s military,” he tries, because it’s the simplest reason, got to be, and he knew Occam’s Razor when kids his age were bleating Baa Baa Black Sheep. “Some sort of new plane, only it looks like a box from the outside ‘cause most of it’s cloaked.”

Rose and the Doctor look at each other like there’s whole unspoken conversations going on. “Pretty _and_ in denial. You do know how to pick them.”

“Leave him alone,” she says, sounding scolding but smiling, “I wasn’t too quick off the mark either. I thought the shop dummies were students, remember?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t look at the Nestene Consciousness and go ‘oh, look at that, obviously it’s a really massive bowl of soup and we’re all imagining it’s talking to us’.”

Adam understood quantum cryptography when he was seven years old. By eight, he was hacking the Pentagon for fun. Whatever code they’re talking, it’s above his head.

“It’s alien,” Rose says, nicely — everything about Rose is nice, and he wonders again if she’d want to go to the cinema or something - “It’s all right. Took me a bit of getting used to.”

“And are you… alien?” He uses the word a hundred times a day, spends his time surrounded with bits of spacecraft and alien civilisations, but he hesitates over it. It’s different, same way there’s a difference between knowing there are other planets out there and looking through a telescope for the first time, seeing Jupiter come into focus.

“She’s human. I’m not.” The Doctor pumps one of the levers. Thumps a couple of buttons. “Rose, take him to the kitchen, make him tea or something. Keep him out of the way.”

“No way,” he says. “I want to know how it works. I want to know everything.” He wants to touch that console, convince himself he hasn’t fallen asleep at his desk back in Van Statten’s museum, but he gets his hand slapped for his trouble.

“Hands off. I’m trying to drive, here. These ion storms don't avoid themselves.”

Rose loops her hand through his arm and says, “Come on. One of the science labs is by the kitchen. Just looks like a big room full of electronics and test tubes to me, but you’ll like it.”

“But where are we even going?” he finally thinks to ask, as she pulls him away, and her smile makes him forget for a second that this is the biggest moment of his entire life.

“Dunno,” she says. “We’ll find out when we get there. Always do. Tea or coffee?”


End file.
